Abstract
This study examined the representation of power, dynastic legitimacy, ancestry, and the foretold ascension of Ahmad Nuhu Bamalli in Mazan Jiran Maza, a Hausa court song composed by Musa Ɗanƙwairo. Performed in 1990, nearly three decades before Bamalli’s emergence as the 19th Emir of Zazzau in 2020, the song presents a prophetic reconstruction of royal destiny rooted in genealogy and historical memory. The study investigated how the oral performance functions beyond artistic praise to become a political and cultural discourse for negotiating authority, identity, and dynastic continuity.
The study adopted New Historicism, particularly Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of narrative self-fashioning, to explore the relationship between orature, historical consciousness, and sociopolitical power. Using a qualitative methodology, data were collected through archival materials, oral interviews, digital media sources, and fieldwork conducted at the Zazzau Emirate Palace. The findings revealed that the song symbolically constructs Ahmad Nuhu Bamalli’s political legitimacy through genealogical references, heroic imagery, and evocations of prominent Zazzau rulers such as Musa Bamalli, Abubakar, and Yero. In addition, the celebrant is addressed as the son of Dasuƙi and the son of the Magajin Gari, while his lineage is further connected to the founding figures of the Sokoto Caliphate through his maternal ancestry. From the maternal line, he is also linked to the Barebari dynasty of Zazzau. These genealogical invocations symbolically position Ahmad Nuhu Bamalli within the broader Northern Nigerian aristocratic and political network that emerged from the nineteenth-century Sokoto Jihad.
The composition preserves collective memory while reinforcing dynastic authority and royal continuity. The study argues that Hausa court songs function as important sites for the production and negotiation of political meaning, historical imagination, and cultural legitimacy.
Keywords: Hausa Court Song, Political Symbolism, Cultural Memory, Historical Representation, New Historicism
Authors:
Abubakar Ayuba, Ph.D.
Department of African Languages and Cultures,
AhmaduBello University, Zaria.
abuayuba2050@gmail.com
ORCIDID0000-0003-0178-3548